Afterimage
by Tawnya Kisaragi
Summary: You're a Strider, so you've always seen more than you should. But just this once, you saw exactly what you needed to see.


Yay! I've jumped fandoms again. And in an unprecedented move, I'm even uploading the first fic for the new fandom. Double yay! I need to upload more often.

~Tawnya

* * *

You are a Strider, and that means you've always seen more than you should.

Which is pretty ironic, all things considered, and within with the actual definition of the word. As soon as your ectomorphic ass crash landed, Bro was there with a miniature version of his cool-guy anime glasses, and they were plastered to your face for the next twelve years. Quite literally a handful of times, actually, because really young kids never understand why something has to be a certain way. How the fuck he kept them on you when you were still rocking diapers is not a subject you care to dwell upon. It was really his only rule growing up—"Only look if you have to know." Like a lot of things he did, it didn't make much sense then, and you figured it was more of his ironic bullshit and honestly, you fought about just damn near everything else. What was the point of bitching about a pair of shades when your ass was already being served hot at the dinner table? None. Zero points. So why waste the effort?

It's also ironic that such shitty pieces of tinted plastic is all it takes. Bare millimeters of molded petrochemicals is all the protection you have. You've found in desperate need, any plastic will do (thanks a-fucking-lot asshole from fifth grade), but it really seems that the cheaper the grade, the better it seems to work. You made the mistake of mentioning it to Rose once. (A lie. You did it on purpose because you were bored as fuck and listening to her was preferable to another installment of Storytime with Karkat.) The gist of the three hour Freudapalooza was that death stops time. Cheaper plastics, which used less refined materials, would therefore be more adept at blocking out certain things. You thought about arguing how Bro's vision was completely different than yours, but she was giving you that infuriating "I know something you don't because I'm the Seer and I've decided not to share for some totally obtuse reasoning you'll just have to accept." Trolling the trolls seemed to be a better use of your energy at that point.

There was also probably irony in the fact your eyes are fucked up in the first place because of her meta-mental power as a Seer, with you both being ecto-twins for all intents and purposes, but you abjure from that thought process because in the end, it doesn't really matter. Worse still, you may actually have to thank her for it. Her for the sight itself, and Bro for the training to use it.

Dirk Strider was pretty much a shit excuse for a parent, but then again, he never tried to pull off the "Dad" routine with you. If he had tried, things might have turned out a lot worse than they had. It gave you a foundation no one else had. Jade had a ghost, Rose had a passive-aggressive alcoholic, and John had a cake-obsessed every man. Yet you, you got the only other person on the planet who could possibly understand. And even in the darkest of times, when his bullshit was just that much shittier than normal, you think you knew that because you never left it. You put up with it instead, you dealt with it, and when you were old enough, you began dishing it back. He had too many years of experience on you to ever come close to winning, but there was pride for the try even as he smacked you down harder than a back alley brawl. The backwards bullying did exactly what it was supposed to—it made you strong enough to accept what you saw without the shades.

The first time was actually shortly after you turned ten. He hauled your winter-vacationing ass out of bed while it was still pitch dark outside, and then hauled it further into the wildes than either of you had been before or since. It was actually a super smart move on his part, taking you out someplace where the light and noise wouldn't drive you insane first. At the time, though, it just pissed you off. And as you both stood in the middle of godforsaken nowhere, you were ready for anything except him staring at you, over you, almost right through you. He let you get good and uncomfortable (though in hindsight, you know he was wondering if he should do this at all) before he did the one thing a bro never does.

He took your glasses.

A lifetime in a tinted world made even the dull light of a setting sun enough to blind you momentarily. You swore and flailed and raged until you finally blinked through the tears enough to realize something was wrong with the world around you. He was still watching you, sans his own shades. And it wasn't just him, it was a thousand of him, spread out behind him until they blended back into the grey horizon. You really only remember what a couple looked like, though you know they were all different in some way or form, too in shock to take in more than the ones directly to his left and right. One had a bright red ring around his neck, the upper part of his shirt drenched in more of the same. The other had been impaled with what looked like his own sword, the final blow in what was obviously a hard fight.

You didn't even realize you were crying until the real him was once more in front of you, holding your face so that all you could see was his bright orange eyes. It's the only time you remember seeing his eyes ever. It still fascinates you that the very outer edges of those irises were ringed red while the rest was flecked with yellow, so unlike your own.

"_Listen to me_." Like you had had a choice. His voice was so soft, but it thundered through you, imprinting itself physically on your soul. "_Our eyes are meant to see things in the deepest black. Places light has never been, never can be. And there will be some fucking scary shit going down when this makes sense, but you got it covered. Because you can see the path that has to be taken. But what you see is never gonna leave you, so you make damn fucking sure you want to know before you look. 'Cuz it's only gonna get worse from here, kid._"

To a ten year old you, it sounded like a lot of garbage, but he managed to push it into your stubborn, thick head anyway. You spent most of the night there, watching the stars connect into lines, mountains become hills, plants sprout, bloom, whither, die. The world was constantly on some high speed camera montage that was superimposed over what was really in front of you, there and yet not. It gave you the worst headache in the world. When you got back to civilization, he gave you space to deal with the fact your eyes really were creepy beyond the whole demonic red thing.

You're kind of ashamed to admit it now, but you honestly hated his guts for almost a year after that. He put up with it like it wasn't an issue, still drawing you into strifes and rap battles and letting you lick your wounds in peace until all the anger became frustration that couldn't be contained anymore. And then a particularly bad beating you took from him one day was all it took to rip the scab off. You railed at him, swore with all the venom and spite you could find, because Jesus fuck, who does any of this shit to a kid? The only reason you stopped at all was because he slammed you back against a wall hard enough to knock the breath out of your lungs. Suddenly faced with not having any oxygen, there wasn't room to be angry, or frustrated, or even all that hurt. By the time you got air back into your system, it was gone completely.

It took about a month after that to finally get brave enough to ask the question you should have asked a year ago. "_What do you see?_"

Cracks. Darkness. Radiance. Purity, more than you'd think could exist in this day and age anymore. In a slow and deliberate manner, he told you he could see under people's skin; see down into the psyche as plain as if it had been tattooed on the dermis itself. Emotional bruises and crushed hearts. Winged hope and bright optimism. He tried to joke that major religion had the iconography for good and evil all wrong. True evil was just hollow and true good overflowed, not that he'd seen either such extreme. He could hear it too, the inner monologues most weren't even aware of, all whispers, soft and low and almost impossible to understand, if he brushed against someone. If he stared someone in the eye long enough, he could even bend their will to his own, leave behind impressions that would never fade.

And suddenly, it made sense. The hardcore bachelor lifestyle you two rocked. The assload of smuppets that filled nearly every goddamn corner of the apartment. The life lived vicariously through television and the internet. The fact the only contact the two of you ever had was in the heat of battle. All because he was too fucked up from his own malfunctions to be able to respond anywhere close to status quo. It had to have been hell, trying to raise a kid while having to deal with that kind of constant feedback. And it cost him to come clean with you, to be that moment of vulnerable because you knew (even though he never said anything) that that knowledge had been used against him before. You made damn sure you paid his honestly back by coming clean yourself. It's the only night you ever spent like that, sitting opposite from each other on the couch, talking without all the normal batshit nonsense. You never did apologize. He never asked you to.

You were still a little too young to really understand, or appreciate, what really happened that night, though. All you knew was that the brotherly bond between may have bent, but it never broke. That made the world right for a while long. That was all that mattered as you both moved on. That was what got you through when the shit hit the fan three years ago. The moment you saw a future self, it all clicked into place, and damned if Dirk wasn't right—you could see what you needed to do, what had to happen, and you got that shit done.

There's still a part of you that wishes you could have said thank you before that vision from so long ago came true, but you know the better way to do it is by putting what he taught you to good use. Which you have, totally justifying your title as Knight of Time. All that effort, and all that trial, and every single broken shitty sword meant to make the you standing now was the one who got through. So that you could watch the darkness crack and hear the ensuing silence and _not_ lose your mind along the way. Music to drown out the noise in your head, rap to keep your brain sharp and focused, and a body that could take the punishment of an advanced warrior class.

But it's gotten worse since you hit God Tier. If you focus hard enough, you can see things whether you shift the glasses aside or not. Each new destruction crawls across your skin, sickly, unnatural, unstable in an area where everything is already held together by threads. You aren't sleeping well when you manage to actually get that far and those shades haven't come off your face once since you touched down on this forsaken hunk of debris. For a master of time, these last three years have stretched ad naseum, blurred through perception, relative inactivity, and a never-ending loop of anxiety, swearing, and the sharp learning curve that is troll culture. It was supposed to only be three goddamn years, but you've lived twice as many lives as there are people around you, been through three times that much in just as many minutes, and now you just feel…out of sync. Old and angry. Young and fearless.

Just the right age and scared out of your goddamn fucking mind.

That's why you had to look. Everyone one finally caught up with one another, but the end was far from near. Those three years had grated against you hard, left you feeling raw and in desperate need to believe something that wasn't Lalonde's hinky Seer shit. So even though it was the first time you'd actually be physically meeting John, you hung back from the group a bit, and when everyone seemed suitably occupied with their interspecies meet-and-greet shenanigans, you took the chance to shift your shades and _look_.

The trolls had always been a bit weird in your opinion and the vision of them didn't change that any. Unlike the countless versions you see with your friends, there's only four for each troll, including a good number you haven't had the distinct pleasure of living with before. There's the grub form, an adolescent form, a young adult form, and then a fully grown form that none of the previous three do much to prepare you for. A part of you wants to consider the implications of that particular progression, but now you're just trying to stall. At this point, you're willing to admit to yourself you're afraid of what you're going to see and seriously consider just calling the whole thing off. Who would blame you for that after what you'd just seen what Karkat turns into?

You don't get the chance. Rose calls your name and, just like Pavlov's fucking dog, you turn to look at her. It's not Rose that you see first, however. She's bright like a sun to your unguarded eyes, but this is more of a sparkle, like the light is catching on things and reflecting rather than coming from a definite source. Not gold, but blue, shifting, moving—no, swirling, as if on a light wind, and whether it's a conscious reaction on your part or not, time stops.

John stands in front of you with that inquisitively derpy look you've always imagined he'd wear whenever he was uncertain about something. That long windsock he calls a hood is pushed back, which is the only thing that solidifies him as the "real" version rather than one of the numerous other iterations trailing out behind him. There's fewer than you would have originally supposed he'd have, most of them God Tier, all of them going to haunt your darkest, loneliest moments because you know there's nothing you can do to stop them from becoming true. But the thing that really breaks you down is that they're all smiling at you, and when he says your name, their combined voice is a chorus for a summer breeze, full of sunshine, warmth and contentment.

You shove your glasses back up and try not to choke on the air caught in your lungs.

"Dave?" It's just one voice this time, though you're not sure if that's much of a mercy. "You okay?"

The smile you flash him isn't as forced as you suspected it might have to be. "Better than okay, bro," you assure him.

"Really?" He doesn't sound certain, fidgeting a bit. "Because you had this really odd look on your face and…I don't know." And now he's not looking at you, self-conscious and shy. "It's like you were disappointed or something."

It finally occurs to you that he's probably been worrying about this meeting as much as you have. "Naw, man. I'm the furthest from disappointed there is. Not even in the same universe anymore."

The right thing at that point would have been to make some sort of snarky comment. Tease him a bit, give yourself time to reestablish that aloofness you've needed all these years in order to deal with life in general. What you do instead is move without thinking, not necessarily flash-stepping to his side but doing a damn good impression of it, and hug him. It's awkward as all hell since you've never really hugged anyone before, so you don't know if you're squeezing him too tight, not hard enough, or in the friend-appropriate place. You've obviously startled him (holy fuck, you startled yourself) because he freezes up in your arms for all of three seconds before he's hugging you back. You're pretty sure Rose is smirking and that everyone else is staring, but fuck them and their voyeuristic bent. There's plenty of time to kick anyone who wants to make a big deal out of this in their ass later.

You're a Strider, so you've always seen more than you should. But just this once, you saw exactly what you needed to see.

* * *

Owari


End file.
